A Tale of Two Capital Cities — and One Run That Sparked Something

I just finished a 3.5-mile run in Verona, Wisconsin, where I'm in town for a wedding. I was listening to Adam Savage's book on audio book while I ran — it's deeply aligned with everything I talk about at KindEdge around hands-on experimentation and building brain connections through making things.

I'd just come from Tallahassee, Florida's capital, where I visited my younger son at Florida State with my older son who flew in from England. Now I'm in the capital of Wisconsin. Two capital cities, two completely different natural worlds.

In St. Petersburg I'm surrounded by palms and tropical everything. Tallahassee is this amazing botanical mashup where tropical meets deciduous Midwestern at the Georgia border — it has a little of everything right in the same ground. And then Wisconsin in the fall is something else entirely. Midwestern fall in full swing. Pumpkin-ready, barn-wedding-ready, squirrels-launching-themselves-across-branches-ready.

And in the middle of running through all of that, I had a little makerly mindset moment with my Strava app. And it reminded me of something Roger Deakins once said that I've never forgotten.

What Is a Makerly Mindset?

A makerly mindset is the practice of getting hands-on with whatever tools are available — basic, advanced, digital, physical, borrowed, half-broken — and making something. Not following instructions. Not doing it the way the manual says. Actually playing, testing, making a mess, and seeing what comes out the other side.

It is one of the most powerful ways I know to build new brain connections. New synaptic pathways. New transmitters. New ideas. You literally rewire your thinking by making things with your hands, your body, your time, and your curiosity.

And it requires zero special equipment.

Running Patterns Into a GPS App: The Experiment

I use Strava to track my runs. I love the data — it lets me compare how I felt on a given day against what I ate the day before, my speed, my distance, all of it. Very KindEdge 360: data-driven, iterative, always learning.

On this particular run in Verona, the path was a straight shot out and back. Not the most visually interesting GPS map. So I started thinking: with my makerly mindset active, what if I used my own body as a drawing tool and Strava as the canvas?

On the way back, I started running in patterns. Wide loops. Jagged zigzags. Fast tight swerves. Slow sweeping curves. I was essentially trying to create different sewing or crochet patterns on the GPS map using nothing but my running path and my body.

And then I realized: the pattern doesn't just depend on direction. It also depends on time. If I run the same swirling motion fast versus slow, the shape comes out differently because Strava is plotting GPS position against time, not just position alone. The tool has a hidden variable. And the hidden variable is what makes it interesting.

That realization, mid-run, was a genuine makerly mindset moment. I wasn't doing something profound. I was just playing. But playing taught me something about how the tool actually works that I wouldn't have discovered by using it the way it was intended.

Roger Deakins and the Plastic Grocery Bag

This is what brought Roger Deakins to mind. Deakins is one of the greatest cinematographers in Hollywood history — Shawshank Redemption, No Country for Old Men, Blade Runner 2049, among many others. I had the privilege of hearing him speak in St. Petersburg, Florida, and what he said about his craft has stayed with me.

He talked about how his greatest creative differentiators came not from school, not from using software exactly as designed, but from messy, goofy, trial-and-error experimentation. What happens if I try this? It doesn't do what I want. Okay. Now I know that.

The story that stuck: on a desert location shoot, they needed to get a specific quality of light on a scene. No time to come back. No time to problem-solve traditionally. Someone's lunch was in a cheap, reddish-orange plastic grocery bag. Deakins grabbed it, held it over the light in different ways, and created one of the most memorable visual moments in the film.

A grocery bag. Not a light filter designed by an optical engineer. A grocery bag held at different angles in different configurations until something clicked.

That is the makerly mindset in its purest form. You use what's in your hand. You experiment without a predetermined outcome. And sometimes what comes out the other side is something no textbook would have produced.

Experiment Without a Predetermined Outcome

This is the line I keep coming back to in all things KindEdge: don't go in with the outcome. Go in with the experiment.

I do this every single day with software. I try ten different tools, ten different approaches, ten different configurations. Most of them don't do what I'm looking for. But every single one teaches me something. Now I know which software makers are thoughtful and which ones are arrogant. I know which tools are high-maintenance and which ones are genuinely efficient. I know how to advise others because I've done the messy work of actually testing.

That is knowledge you cannot get from a review article. You get it by picking up the tool and seeing what it does.

Put Perfection Aside and Go Make Something Messy

Whatever your version of a big goal looks like, whether that's launching a business, writing something, building something, starting something, the makerly mindset is one of the most valuable tools you can carry into it.

Because perfection is the enemy of the first step. And the first step is the only thing that generates real feedback from the real world. Ideas bounce differently when they touch something actual. A GPS pattern run in Wisconsin tells you something a planned route never could. A plastic grocery bag against a light creates something a lighting manual would never suggest.

So take everything that's perfect and put it aside for a moment. Go do something messy, awkward, imperfect, undefined, and see what comes back. That is how you get yourself in motion toward the alternate ending to your life.

Cin-cin. Hugs and love.